Saturday, May 25, 2013

Is it time, at long last, for the citizens of the United States to
enjoy the constitutional right to vote for the people who govern them?

Phrased
in that way, the question may come as a shock. The U.S. has waged wars
in Iraq and Afghanistan justified, at least in rhetoric, by the claim
that people deserve the right to vote for their leaders. Most of us
assume that the right to vote has long been enshrined in the U.S.
Constitution.Not according to the Supreme Court. In Bush v. Gore
(2000), the Court ruled that “[t]he individual citizen has no federal
constitutional right to vote for electors for the President of the
United States.” That’s right. Under federal law, according to the
Supreme Court, if you are a citizen of the United States, you have a
right to own a firearm that might conceivably be used in overthrowing
the government. But you have no right to wield a vote that might be used
to change the government by peaceful means.

FairVote, a nonprofit organization that leads the fight for electoral reform in the U.S., points out:

The
right to vote is the foundation of any democracy. Yet most Americans do
not realize that we do not have a constitutionally protected right to
vote. While there are amendments to the U.S. Constitution that prohibit
discrimination based on race (15th), sex (19th) and age (26th), no
affirmative right to vote exists.

I didn't know about this rule requiring background checks on private sales "if the public has access." I suppose that's the old toothless background check law which is limited to gun shows. The gun show promoter is right, this is a total waste of time.

An interesting thing is this guy is an elected sheriff, in Florida no less, not a politically appointed police chief, yet he apparently believes in gun control.

Arizona lawman Joe Arpaio violated the constitutional rights of Latino drivers in his crackdown on illegal immigration, a federal judge found on Friday, and ordered him to stop using race as a factor in law enforcement decisions.

The ruling against the Maricopa County sheriff
came in response to a class-action lawsuit brought by Hispanic drivers
that tested whether police can target illegal immigrants without
racially profiling U.S. citizens and legal residents of Hispanic origin.

U.S. District Court Judge Murray Snow
ruled that the sheriff's policies violated the drivers' constitutional
rights and ordered Arpaio's office to cease using race or ancestry as a
grounds to stop, detain or hold occupants of vehicles - some of them in
crime sweeps dubbed "saturation patrols."

"The great weight of the evidence is that all types of
saturation patrols at issue in this case incorporated race as a
consideration into their operations," Snow said in a written ruling.

He added that race had factored into which vehicles the
deputies decided to stop, and into who they decided to investigate for
immigration violations.

How are they supposed to crack down on illegal immigration without using race as a factor in deciding whom to stop? Or is cracking down on illegal immigration in and of itself racist?

Friday, May 24, 2013

The NRA was started, 1871, right here in New York state. It was
started by some Yankee generals who didn’t like the way my southern boys
had the ability to shoot in what we call the ‘War of Northern
Aggression.’ Now y’all call it the Civil War, but we call it the War of
Northern Aggression down South.“But that was the very reason that they started the National Rifle
Association — it was to teach and train the civilian in the use of the
standard military firearm.

A 5-year-old is being treated for a gunshot wound after accidentally being shot by his sister.

Little Rock Police Dept. Sgt. Cassandra Davis said police were called
to the Baptist Hospital emergency room about 5 p.m. Thursday in
relation to a child being shot in the ankle.

Davis said the incident happened after a father picked his
five-and-six-year-old children up from daycare and had gone back to
their home on Wynn St. He left the children in his truck while he went
to get something from inside the home. While inside, he reportedly heard
a loud 'bang' and saw the girl get out of the truck.

The girl apparently got the gun that her father kept in the truck's
console and somehow shot her brother in the ankle. The father, who had a
conceal carry permit, took his son to the hospital.

Detectives are
interviewing and investigating the father, who could faces charges of
Endangering the Welfare of a Minor.

James Gray is in critical condition at Huntsville Hospital, after his neighbor accidentally shot him through his apartment wall.

Police say Gray was inside his Autumn Pointe
apartment; when Tad Waddell, in the apartment next door dropped a gun he
was unloading, and it went-off. The bullet went through the wall,
hitting Gray in the chest.

The Douglas County Sheriff's Office has determined no crime was
committed when a Highlands Ranch man was accidentally shot with a gun
belonging to a Boulder police officer earlier this month.

Investigators
said the off-duty officer was seated in the back seat of the vehicle
with the victim when the third friend moved some items in the trunk of
the car. The gun was among the items and discharged.

The bullet apparently went through the back seat and struck the victim on the side of his torso.

The officer and his two friends have known each other since middle school.

Boulder police said the weapon that discharged was not the officer's police-issued gun.

The
unnamed officer was initially placed on administrative leave but police
said Thursday he had returned to work after they completed their own
investigation.

This is how gun owners, cops, prosecutors and civilians alike, protect each other. They call negligence accidents and write it off.

Rather, there should be strict accountability for gun owners. If you leave your gun in such an insecure way that someone else can discharge it unintentionally, YOU are responsible.

Gun owners love to shirk their responsibility, all the while calling for stricter sentencing guidelines for criminals.

Thursday, May 23, 2013

OK, I know this will come off as a little harsh, heartless and probably as deeply lacking in compassion or empathy, but let me say that, first of all, someone needs to say it, and why not me?
Although I’ve lived in New York City since I was 6 (well, with a few
breaks here and there), I was actually born in Oklahoma City. And even
though I do acknowledge that it’s distasteful to mention this “so soon,”
it has to be said now, before the vote goes to Congress.

So here the fuck it is: NO EMERGENCY FUNDS FOR OKLAHOMA. There, I said it. Sorry, but fuck ‘em.
Why do I say this? Is it simply because their scumbag senators (Tom
Coburn and Jim Inhoffe) dragged their feet for MONTHS on voting for aid
for New York and the Sandy-impacted areas here in the Northeast? Yeah,
that’s part of it. A big part of it. Is it because both of them
ultimately voted AGAINST Sandy-aid to this area? Yeah, that’s a big part
of it, too. But it’s more than that. Much more, and soon you’ll see it
too, so give me a minute to make my case…The first thing that should be noted is that Oklahoma is one of the biggest, fattest, Federal-funds gobbling hobo states in the nation, receiving $1.36 in federal funds for every dollar in taxes it pays to the federal government (It’s also the 10th least unionized state with 5.5% union membership). Meanwhile, my state, New York, received just 79 cents back for each dollar that we paid, and we paid a helluva lot more in taxes than Oklahoma did. In other words, it’s fair to say that New York keeps Oklahoma afloat.
We pay to keep Oklahomans employed and we pay to keep up their
infrastructure via the federal funds Oklahoma vampirically sucks out of our state, to the detriment of our students and our fucking roads. And yet, Oklahoma senators were stupid enough to vote against Sandy aid? Huh? WTF? Please don’ hit me massah I’ll get back in de house!

On July 4, Adam Kokesh hopes to lead 1,000 protesters armed with guns
into Washington, D.C. to advocate for open carry. In Kokesh’s eyes, a
crowd armed with guns compares to the nonviolent civil disobedience
practiced by Mahatma Gandhi.

Suppose the D.C. police, as they have promised, block the marchers from crossing into Washington? How should they respond?“With Satyagraha,” Kokesh, 31, texted The Washington
Post. That is a term used by Mahatma Gandhi to describe his strategy of
nonviolent resistance to British rule in India. [...]Did his response of “satyagraha” mean violence is unacceptable?“Only if absolutely necessary in defense of life or limb,” he wrote.

Satyagraha,
in Gandhi’s words, is “a way of life based on love and compassion.”
Gandhi explained that “[i]n the application of Satyagraha I have
discovered in the earliest stages that pursuit of truth did not admit of
violence being inflicted on one’s opponent but that he must be weaned
from error by patience and sympathy.”

Compare Satyagraha to Kokesh’s event description
on Facebook. Although Kokesh claims his march will “peacefully turn
back” if confronted with “physical resistance,” he ominously warns the
march will be violent if “the government chooses to make it violent.” He
also proclaims that “[w]e will march with rifles loaded & slung
across our backs to put the government on notice that we will not be
intimidated & cower in submission to tyranny.”

Responding to the National Rifle Association's annual convention in
Houston earlier this month, Connecticut's freshman Senator Chris Murphy noted,
"The NRA kind of announced this weekend they're morphing into a
paramilitary group, that essentially they're going to be advocating for
armed resistance to the U.S. government." Law professor Stanley Fish mused,
"The more militant members of the NRA and most of its leaders may be
un-American ... [John Wilkes] Booth's modern successors are saying that a
house in the hands of tyrants does not deserve to stand and they are
ready to bring it down with their constitutionally protected guns."
They weren't exaggerating.

The NRA didn't just throw down the gauntlet to our government in
Houston. It also articulated a vision of America and its ideals that is
the antithesis of what our Founders intended, and which would mean the
abolition of our Constitution.

There can longer be any doubt that the NRA's leadership views our
government as a dangerous enemy that must be defeated with violence and
force of arms. The rhetoric at their convention was consistently
apocalyptic. Keynote speaker Glenn Beck declared:

The freedom of all mankind, make no mistake, is at stake ...
Our liberty, our way of life, is being legislated out of existence. Our
rights are being diminished by a ruling class of powerful elites.
They're growing out of control. We are in a precarious situation. We
are. The hour grows late. We have a government that is now run by
radical revolutionaries ... They know, if you lose the Second Amendment
you certainly lose the First and the Fourth and the Fifth, the right to a
grand jury, and the 10th and the 14th and the 19th...

A series of posters appeared around the Washington State Capitol in the
last several days linking gay rights and opposition to gun laws. One
poster even suggests that laws intended to prevent gun violence are the moral equivalent of discrimination:

Another poster proposes armed vigilantism to “defend” the right to marry:

The poster of the two women isn’t new. It has been around for about four years and St. Louis Gun Rights Examiner Kurt Hofmann wrote about it in November 2009. I suppose Kurt's a big supporter of the poor-persecuted-gun-owners idea. Maybe he's be willing to elaborate for us.

After the December killings in Newtown, Conn., the National Rifle
Association’s chief lambasted the the evils of violent movies and video
games, saying they, rather than guns, were a source of the nation’s
woes.

Now, less than six months later, the NRA’s “flagship publication,” American Rifleman, is celebrating cinematic savagery with a list of the top 10 “coolest gun movies” that unabashedly praises Hollywood depictions of death and crime.

“This movie made shooters realize the importance of firepower, and
that preparedness might be needed in the future,” Rackley wrote about
“The Terminator.” “That is what this movie is about — the future — and
how anything is possible, even the creation of cyber units that are a
mix of man and machine, which isn’t that unbelievable since recent news
reports reveal that scientists have built a bionic man that utilizes a
working heart, a set of lungs and a face. Let’s just hope they don’t
come for us.”

American Rifleman’s top 10 list is a far cry from the remarks NRA chief executive Wayne LaPierre made at a >press conference a week after the Newtown shooting.
In that statement, LaPierre decried Hollywood as a “a callous, corrupt
and corrupting shadow industry that sells, and sows, violence against
its own people.”

“Isn’t fantasizing about killing people as a way to get your kicks
really the filthiest form of pornography?” LaPierre said. “In a race to
the bottom, media conglomerates compete with one another to shock,
violate and offend every standard of civilized society by bringing an
ever-more-toxic mix of reckless behavior and criminal cruelty into our
homes.”

A high-tech startup is wading into the gun control debate with a
wireless controller that would allow gun owners to know when their
weapon is being moved — and disable it remotely.The technology, but not an actual gun, was demonstrated Tuesday
at a wireless technology conference in Las Vegas and was shown to The
Associated Press in advance. It comes at a time when lawmakers around
the U.S. are considering contentious smart gun laws that would require
new guns to include high-tech devices that limit who can fire them.The new Yardarm Technologies LLC system would trigger an alarm on an
owner’s cellphone if a gun is moved, and the owner could then hit a button
to activate the safety and disable the weapon. New guns would come with
a microchip on the body and antennas winding around the grip. It would
add about $50 to the cost of a gun, and about $12 a year for the
service.“The idea is to connect gun owners more directly with
their guns, no matter what the circumstance,” said Yardarm CEO Robert
Stewart.The Yardarm system is one of several recently introduced
high-tech offerings: the iGun only fires if it recognizes a ring on a
finger, the Intelligun uses a fingerprint locking system and
TriggerSmart uses radio frequency identification.

I'll bet the same guys who applaud the plastic 3D printed gun, even in its primitive stages, will denigrate smart gun technology as impractical and expensive.

Jurors in the Jodi Arias
murder trial told the judge Wednesday they were unable to reach a
unanimous verdict on whether the convicted murderer should be sentenced
to life in prison or death for killing her one-time boyfriend, prompting
the judge to instruct them to continue deliberations and try to work through their differences.The jury reported its impasse after only about two and a half hours of deliberations that began Tuesday afternoon."I
do not wish or intend to force a verdict," Judge Sherry Stephens told
the jurors before sending them back to continue discussions. She
instructed them to try to identify areas of agreement and disagreement
as they work toward a decision.Under Arizona
law, a hung jury in the death penalty phase of a trial requires a new
jury to be seated to decide the punishment. If the second jury cannot
reach a unanimous decision, the judge would then sentence Arias to spend
her entire life in prison or be eligible for release after 25 years.

That's an interesting rule. If the first jury can't see their way clear to sanction murder, they bring in another jury to try.

A Chechen immigrant who was being questioned about his possible links to one of the Boston Marathon bombing suspects was shot and killed by a federal agent in Florida on Wednesday after he suddenly turned violent, the FBI said.

A friend of the dead man identified him to Reuters as 27-year-old Ibragim Todashev, who had previously lived in Boston and knew Tamerlan Tsarnaev,
the older of the two brothers suspected of planting two bombs at the
marathon on April 15, killing three people and injuring 264.

NBC News reported that Todashev had confessed to his involvement in an unsolved 2011 triple homicide in a Boston suburb that investigators believe was drug related, citing law enforcement officials.

Authorities were investigating possible connections
between Tsarnaev, who died in a shootout with police, and the 2011
incident.

Three men including a close friend of Tsarnaev were
found stabbed in the neck in an apartment on September 12, 2011, in
Waltham, Massachusetts. News reports said marijuana was strewn over
their bodies.

Wednesday's
incident took place at an apartment complex near the Universal Studios
theme park, where the FBI and members of other law enforcement agencies were interviewing the man about the marathon bombing.

"A violent confrontation was initiated by the
individual," the FBI said. A special agent, it said, "acting on the
imminent threat posed by the individual, responded with deadly force.
The individual was killed and the special agent was transported to the
hospital with non-life-threatening injuries."

Wednesday, May 22, 2013

Authorities will wait to be sure a toddler
has recovered from his injuries sustained in an accidental shooting with
his parents’ gun before they decide if charges will be filed.
“We want to make sure the child is out of the woods,” Hill said.
“He’s scheduled to have surgery later this week for a broken jaw.

“We want to make sure he continues to improve,”
Hill said. “We’ll wait until the conclusion of the investigation to
determine if charges will be filed.”The 2-year-old found a gun in his parents’
bedroom Saturday afternoon and picked it up. Capt. Derrick Hill of the
Randolph County Sheriff’s office said the gun went off and hit the child
in the face.

They've got it ass-backwards. The gun owners should have been in jail the night of the incident. I don't understand this waiting to see if the kid is out of the woods first before deciding if charges will be be brought. Charges should be brought immediately upon determining who the responsible person is.

Boston Celtics NBA basketball
player Terrence Williams, right, is led from a courtroom Monday, May 20,
2013, in Kent, Wash. Williams was arrested Sunday and accused of
brandishing a gun at the mother of his 10-year-old son during a
visitation exchange. (AP Photo/Ted S. Warren)

A Texas man arrested with 21 guns in his car while passing through
New Jersey four years ago will remain in prison after an appeals court
on Monday upheld his conviction in a case that could wind up in front of
the state Supreme Court.

Dustin Reininger is serving a five-year sentence with a three-year minimum before he is eligible for parole.

A jury convicted him in absentia in 2010 on several weapons counts
including illegal possession of shotguns, rifles, hollow-point bullets,
and a high-capacity magazine after police found him sleeping in his car
behind a bank in Readington early March 20, 2009.

Reininger, who was listed as living in Rockport, Texas, initially denied
having guns in the car, but after they noticed two firearms cases on
the backseat, police searched the vehicle and found 14 rifles, four
shotguns, and three handguns, along with the bullets and magazine. Reininger told police he
was moving to Texas from Maine and transporting the weapons, which his
attorney says he legally owned.

I'm sure the pro-gun crowd will find this a terrible violation of the guy's rights, but is it really? When gun owners decide to break laws because they find them too inconvenient or outright wrong, they should be prepared to pay the price. If they gamble and lose, they have to pay up. What could be fairer than that?

The reasons for the laws are obvious. New Jersey doesn't like people hanging around banks, or anywhere else for that matter, with a car full of weapons.

You
may have seen the recent claim that gun deaths are declining, thus
proving that more guns equals a safer America. Here's an in depth look
at all the figures:

"The rate
of serious gunshot wounds -- those that require hospitalization --
increased by nearly half between 2001 and 2011. The fact that more
gunshot victims are surviving their wounds is hardly evidence for the
conservative media's support of weaker gun laws."

Gun control supporter Bill Maher admitted he owns guns for personal protection even though he thinks the Second Amendment is “bullsh*t.”On the HBO Real Time episode on Friday (see embed below), Maher criticized the failed Manchin-Toomey expanded background checks bill
because it prohibited a national gun registry. “ … Of course we need a
gun registry,” Maher said. “The Second Amendment is bullsh*t.”Much of the opposition to the Senate bill centered on concerns,
despite denials from Manchin-Toomey supporters, that a federal gun
registry would be the next step.Later in the show, Maher offered this interesting revelation: “As
long as we live in the gun country, I ain’t giving up my gun … there
have been 12 home invasions in my neighborhood in the last year … I have
two guns, one upstairs and one down.” Maher presumably lives in an
upscale Beverly Hills enclave.

What do you think? Are owning guns and calling the 2A bullshit two incompatible things? I'm sure the pro-gun crowd who venerate the 2nd Amendment would say so, but is it?

I don't think so. I consider the 2nd Amendment to be anachronistic and meaningless in today's world, notwithstanding the recent Supreme Court rulings. Yet, I don't believe complete eradication of civilian gun ownership is appropriate.

A California law that requires all semi-automatic handguns to be
equipped with technology that stamps its identifying information on
bullet casings is now in effect after years of delays.

Though signed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in 2007, the law couldn't
take effect as it was supposed to in 2010 because of patents on the
technology, including at least one that had been bought up by a gun
rights group to delay the law's implementation.

On Friday,
Attorney General Kamala Harris officially certified and announced that
patents were no longer an issue. Former state Assemblyman Mike Feuer,
who authored the law, hailed it as a "monumental day for law
enforcement" and said it was the first such law to go into effect in the
nation. Other states, notably New York, have looked at such a law, but
have had troubles getting it passed.

"This very important
technology will help us as law enforcement in identifying and locating
people who improperly and illegally use and discharge firearms," Harris
said.

Critics say this is a de facto ban on new firearms. What's your opinion?

The Art=Ammo flash mob laid down its anti-gun message this afternoon
at a Newark park, where more than a dozen volunteers sprawled on the
ground as others traced their outlines in chalk, leaving behind a
macabre crime-scene collage meant to call attention to gun violence.

"We think it's really important that people be
able to visualize the effects of gun violence," said Nikio Bocour, a
project coordinator for Ceasefire New Jersey, who helped organize the
event in conjunction with Manhattan-based Art=Ammo.

This guy sounds amazingly like Robert Farago, not only in voice modulation but in content as well. Let's face it, you've got to be way out there on the extremist scale to support blind people's right to own guns.

A 2-year-old boy is expected to survive after accidentally shooting himself in the mouth at his home on Saturday.

The
boy suffered serious but not life-threatening injuries, and his
condition is improving at Brenner Children's Hospital, Randolph County
deputies said.

The
boy broke a mandible bone in his jaw. Capt. Derrick Hill said it was a
miracle the shot missed vital blood vessels and the spinal column.

The
boy was alone in his parents' bedroom when picked up an improperly
locked .45-caliber pistol. The boy put the gun in his
mouth while playing with it and pulled the trigger. The
boy's parents and siblings were home at the time of the shooting, and
his father rushed him to Randolph Hospital, deputies said.

Deputies identified the boy's parents as Jose Palencia and Agelica Rameriez, both of Asheboro.

Charges are pending in the case, and the investigation was still ongoing as of Monday afternoon, Hill said.

Well with names like Palencia and Rameriez, I guess I'll have to refrain from my usual conclusions about the typical characters responsible for this kind of thing in The Tar Heel State. But the rules are the same. Dad should already be charged with child endangerment in the very least.

This is the first ad from the Marylanders to Prevent Gun Violence Education Fund, focusing on the effectiveness of the fingerprint licensing provision in Maryland's Firearms Safety Act, which was signed into law by Gov. O'Malley on May 16, 2013. In the five states where fingerprint licensing is currently required for handgun purchases, gun death rates are among the lowest in the nation. According to experts at the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research, cities in states with handgun purchaser licensing laws have much lower rates of within-state illegal gun trafficking than those without licensing.

Good discussion in which they almost, but not quite, hit the nail on the head. Guns start out the legal property of people who have a right to own them. Then, through various means some of those guns end up in the criminal world. There is no other source of guns used in crime. At this stage guns are not smuggled in the country in significant numbers since they are so readily available domestically and they are obviously not manufactured in people's basements very much for the same reason.

This brings us to the inescapable solution: strict gun control laws which are primarily aimed at law-abiding gun owners in order to secondarily impact on the availability of guns to criminals.

Wait a minute. Doesn't that chart show gun deaths INCREASING since about the year 2000? That's not what our pro-gun friends keep telling us. Thaaat's why they always go back to 1993. Now I get it.

Tho obvious point of the chart is that the much beloved car comparisons will soon be a thing of the past. For me, they never worked anyway. But the poor, persecuted gun-rights fanatics are going to be minus one of their favorite talking points come 2015.

As many as 40 protestors held signs and wads of cash outside New St. Paul Tabernacle Church of God in Christ in Detroit Saturday protesting a Wayne County gun buyback event.Jerry Acker, a partner in Goodman Acker, P.C law firm, fronted $50
Meijer gift cards for each of the 200 guns collected, a cost of $10,000.Meanwhile, gun advocates waited outside offering cash for guns the government hoped to take off the streets and out of homes. "In
many cases, they'll end up circulating back in the communities we're
trying to take them out of," said Wayne County Chief of Police
Operations Rafael Washington said.One pro-gun protester was detained temporarily and cited for disorderly conduct.Washington said he was "impeding the walkway," "becoming very vocal," and "interfering with the process."

Need I say anything about that shining example of gun rights in the video?

(Leah Hogsten | Tribune file
photo)
A state permit is still required to carry a concealed weapon in Utah --
requiring completion of a criminal background check and a class. That
could change if gun-rights advocates in the Legislature succeed in plans
to try again next year to pass a "constitutional carry" law. In this
file photo, Granite School district hearing specialist instructor Kasey
Hansen gets handgun training from concealed carry permit instructor Jim
McCarthy

The issue of whether to allow guns in schools
and who should carry them has sparked debate in Utah and nationwide
since a gunman killed 20 children and six adults at Connecticut’s Sandy
Hook Elementary in December. But at least one group of voices has been
mostly missing: those of teachers who already carry.

No one knows exactly how many Utah teachers are
packing because, as concealed-firearm permit holders, they’re not
required to tell parents, school police officers or their principals.

Plus, many of those teachers fear revealing
their identities would give criminals a tactical advantage or cause
backlash from parents, colleagues or administrators.

The article goes on to mention that there have been incidents of gun misuse by teachers in Utah. It's not unheard.

It also mentions the possibility of the state going to "Constitutional Carry," which would of course mean lesser qualified teachers carrying.

Authorities say a man shot in the groin at an Alabama hunting camp may have been mistaken for wild game.Tuscaloosa County sheriff's
homicide unit is investigating the shooting early Saturday, which sent a
26-year-old man to a hospital for surgery.Investigators say the
victim was shot by a 36-year-old old man who was hunting wild hogs, and
they suspect the hunter believed he was firing his gun at an animal.
Authorities said both men had permission to be at the hunting camp on
Clements Road.Investigators released the suspect without charging him, but say they're still investigating. They say no foul play is suspected.

I guess it depends on how you define "foul play." In my bood, violating two or three of The 4 Rule sof Gun Safety is foul play.

In 1934, The National Firearms Act was passed which was aimed at
regulating machine guns, sawed-off shotguns, silencers, and other
firearms used by criminals. The NFA required that all machine guns
were to be registered. Additionally, all people who wanted to own
these items
were to be fingerprinted and submitted to an extensive and
time-consuming—this was long before the Internet— background check; and
local Law Enforcement was also required to give permission for
ownership.

Sunday, May 19, 2013

I have to admit some curiosity about what might be the motive for Adam Kokesh's March on Washington, DC. It seems he was once a War Protestor who managed to get a spot on Russia Today, but was too weird for even RT.

A more farfetched question is the hypothetical proposition of armed Jewish resistance. First, they were not commonly armed even prior to the 1928 Law. Second, Jews had seen pogroms before and had survived them, though not without suffering. They would expect that this one would, as had the past ones, eventually subside and permit a return to normalcy. Many considered themselves “patriotic Germans” for their service in the first World War. These simply were not people prepared to stage violent resistance. Nor were they alone in this mode of appeasement. The defiance of “never again” is not so much a warning to potential oppressors as it is a challenge to Jews to reject the passive response to pogrom. Third, it hardly seems conceivable that armed resistance by Jews (or any other target group) would have led to any weakening of Nazi rule, let alone a full scale popular rebellion; on the contrary, it seems more likely it would have strengthened the support the Nazis already had. Their foul lies about Jewish perfidy would have been given a grain of substance. To project backward and speculate thus is to fail to learn the lesson history has so painfully provided.

in short, those who fail to learn the lessons of history are doomed to repeat them.

Not a question, but a statement since the Constitution that some people claim to respect and all that says (Article VI):

The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the members of
the several state legislatures, and all executive and judicial officers,
both of the United States and of the several states, shall be bound by
oath or affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious test
shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust
under the United States.

Repeat that last part just to make it clear to you who don't get that the US is a SECULAR Society (like it or not):

no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States.

That means it doesn't matter what religion Barack Obama (or Mitt Romney or anybody else for that matter) happens to be.

You might have missed that bit since that paragraph comes right after:

This Constitution, and the laws of the United States which shall be made
in pursuance thereof; and all treaties made, or which shall be made,
under the authority of the United States, shall be the supreme law of
the land; and the judges in every state shall be bound thereby, anything
in the Constitution or laws of any State to the contrary
notwithstanding.

As I said, you have a problem because the Constitution isn't on your side if you are trying to make
someone's religion an issue in US politics. In fact, religion would not
intrude in US politics given the US's being a secular state--I only
wish more people would be disgusted by this trend.

But, maybe some of you aren't the strong supporters of the Constitution that you claim to be.

Or, maybe you just need to brush up on what exactly it is that you are supposed to be defending.

It's amusing that you lot have missed the comment about my dog that she's "gone to court more than Michelle Bachmann and most US Law School professors ever have."
No wonder you don't get the point about the blog being named after my dog.

March 6, 2013:A recently-started armed resource officer
program at schools in Highland, New York, was suspended after one of the
security guards unintentionally
fired his weapon in school.Children
were present, but luckily no one was injured.

March 1, 2013:During a conceal carry training class, on
school grounds, which was part of a new program to arm school staff, a school
maintenance worker who was a student in the class unintentionally
fired his weapon, wounding himself in the leg.

January 17, 2013:A charter school in Lapeer, Michigan, decided
to start having an armed guard on campus.Three days after hiring a guard, the man left
his weapon in a school bathroom where kids could have found it.

October 8, 2012:A man with a concealed handgun visited an
elementary school classroom in Moore, Oklahoma, to help the teacher with her
computer.His
gun fell out and he left without it, only realizing it was missing after
the media reported it.Small children
were present in the room at the time.

Guest host Mark Thompson, author David Cay Johnston, “The War Room”
contributor Brett Erlich, Ana Kasparian and Jayar Jackson discuss
whether there’s any validity to comparisons between President Obama and
former President Nixon in the wake of recent White House scandals
involving the Internal Revenue Service and the Associated Press.
Johnston says, “The Republicans aren’t interested in running a good
government. They want to destroy President Obama.”

The tiny Colorado town of Nucla has passed an ordinance making gun ownership mandatory.

The
Nucla Town Board last week voted to require that residents own
firearms, but it has exceptions for heads of households who don't want
to participate or who cannot legally possess a gun.

Nucla's ordinance passed by a 5-1 vote. It was inspired by the Family Protection Ordinance passed by the town of Nelson, Ga.

The
Colorado town of less than 1,000 people becomes the latest of a handful
of communities nationwide to pass such a rule. The measures are widely
considered unenforceable.

"The main
reason is to protect Second Amendment rights, especially with the
government talking about abolishing them," said Nucla Town Board member
Joshua Newingham. "Out here, we hunt, we do sports shooting. It's a way
of life."

How many times have we heard the pro-gun lament that they don't tell us what to do, so we shouldn't tell them. Well, I guess in places like Nucla CO and Nelson GA we've got exceptions to that.

A teenaged boy and two men were shot and killed in three separate
shootings Friday night and Saturday morning, according to authorities.At least eight others were also shot overnight on the South and West Sides.

The gun-rights fanatics keep pretending they have nothing to do with this. But the fact is, the lax gun laws in places like Indiana and Ohio and even Illinois itself are allowing a continual flow of guns into Chicago's inner city. Those gang members and drug dealers certainly aren't manufacturing their own weapons.

The man killed in the lobby of Alhambra police headquarters Friday
brandished a knife before officers fatally shot him, said L.A. County
sheriff's officials.

The man walked into the lobby about 7:30 a.m. carrying a
black backpack, but when officers tried to speak to him in several
different languages, he was unresponsive and incoherent, said officials
with the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department.

The suspect eventually pulled out a large knife from his backpack and
three of the five officers standing in the lobby shot the man,
authorities said.

I suppose this one doesn't count because the bad guy had a knife. But to me, it seems like another example of what the pro-gun fanatics often say never happens.